The economic argument for transit system vibration mitigation
This “economic argument for action” is excerpted from a presentation that we developed about light rail vibration impacts on university labs. Similar thinking has also been applied broadly to “energetic contaminants” like EMI / magnetic fields and others. If you're interested in hearing more, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The economic argument for vibration mitigation
All new transit projects require some degree of environmental impact assessment, but some of the most intense scrutiny surrounds noise and vibration. The most-challenging problems involve mass transit rail near high-tech and laboratory uses, like at university science departments or National Labs. These can be extraordinarily sensitive, far beyond anything that would be annoying to people.
Even concert halls and hospitals are far less impacted than research labs, for which energetic contaminants like vibration, noise, and EMI / magnetic fields can be devastating. Unlike other sensitive uses — where human sensibilities govern — these high-tech uses tend to become more sensitive over time. There is nothing about classical music that makes the concert halls of today more sensitive than those of the past. However, any scientist/technologist doing physical research will tell you that their field has evolved significantly, even during their own careers.
This means that impacts to institutional campuses from new sources of environmental vibrations (like light rail systems) can affect not only existing research but can also place fundamental limits on the kinds of research that can be conducted there in the future. This is unique to “technical” sensitivities, and means that it is worth thinking deeply about protecting high-quality research environments.
Highly-Sensitive, but also High-Value
It seems easy to dismiss the concerns of scientists and engineers who use these labs, especially when it becomes obvious that environmental mitigations might cost millions of dollars for a large rail project. On a simple economic basis, however, these sensitive research and development uses cannot be disregarded. These institutions rely directly on quiet environments for noise, vibration, and EMI / magnetic field fluctuations, and while the costs of preservation may seem large, they are dwarfed by the value of the work that is done on campus.
A large university might have annual research grant budgets in the billions of dollars. We recently conducted an informal survey of departmental grant summaries published by the Office of Sponsored Programs at a large American university. The school had been involved in extensive negotiations regarding transit system (LRT) impacts to campus via vibration, EMI, and acoustical noise. The 2019 annual report documents almost $200M in annual grant activity solely within the hard sciences and engineering, along with another $174M between an environmental sciences program and a standalone applied physics lab.
Add in another $800M+ in grants at the associated medical research center, and it is clear that fantastic sums of money – and hundreds or even thousands of jobs – are on the table.
Research in those departments is driven by physical experimentation, and a significant fraction of this work is highly sensitive to interference from vibration and magnetic field fluctuations, including those generated by passing trains. Between the science/engineering departments and the medical research functions in this university example, it is conceivable that something on the order of $100M in funding could depend directly or indirectly upon suitably quiet lab environments.
These are extraordinary – and annually-recurring – sums that should signal the economic importance of these activities in society. In this light, the millions of dollars in rail vibration mitigation seem like less of a pure cost and more of an investment, and at the very least could be thought of as cheap insurance.
Vibration Impacts at the Institutional scale
Notably, impacts from transit systems affect entire organizations and departments: many of the objections that we have heard as vibration consultants center around competitiveness in funding acquisition (poor research productivity leads to smaller grants) as well as competitiveness in attracting and retaining top faculty. The administrators of departments like Chemistry and Physics are very clear that the availability of quiet lab vibration environments is critical to the success of the entire department, and university leaders do not hesitate to point out the importance of science and technology to the schools’ missions. In exclusively research-oriented environments like corporate R&D campuses and at National Laboratories, the connection between quiet vibration environments and institutional success is even more direct.
Preserving these vibration-sensitive laboratory spaces is therefore highly valued. Just as receiver-based mitigation is unattractive, so too is relocation. Due to unique utility, space-management, and hazardous materials needs, laboratory spaces are not trivial to implement in routine commercial buildings and usually require purpose-built structures. Even in cases where relocation is superficially economical due to scale (there are enough vibration-affected labs to warrant the construction of an entire building), research program managers are justifiably concerned about physically separating users in the department, or separating them from their colleagues in other departments. Indeed, the architectural trend in lab design has been toward buildings that foster interaction between different research groups, even (perhaps especially) across disciplines: just look at the number of new university facilities for which the word “interdisciplinary” appears in the building name.
Quiet vibration environments as economic policy
These R&D campuses are centers of economic activity not only in the immediate sense but also in the broader sense that these are the places where tomorrow’s technologies are born. Given the economic stakes involved, from both the direct (grants) as well as indirect (regional / national competitiveness) perspectives, it should be clear that unnecessarily damaging this kind of economic engine is poor policy.
These institutions usually support new transit projects. Given the human populations of these campuses, better transportation is strongly desired. Indeed, any large university should crave better and smarter transportation options to help ease pressures on campus traffic (itself a source of vibration impacts), parking, and housing. Good policy means finding ways to economically introduce mass transit access for the campus and surrounding communities without damaging or limiting the research functions at the core of the institutional mission.
It's not impossible; rather, it just requires thinking about – and advocating financing for – investments in rail vibration and EMI / magnetic field mitigation strategies. When you consider just how much economic activity is at stake, it should be easy to justify the relatively small (and mostly one-time) costs to maintain an institution’s ability to generate world-class research.
Contact us if you need help negotiating around environmental vibration impacts to sensitive buildings at your campus. We have experience with infrastructure impacts, especially from new light rail and other transportation systems. We can help keep your campus quiet and productive, even as transportation options are improved for everyone.